Correspondence

Cleveland Marxists discuss climate stats
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Top 10 temperature databases all track warming together
CLIMATESIGNALS | FEBRUARY 3, 2011
http://pulsene.ws/XJo5

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This graph plots the average of ten different global temperature datasets. To create this graph, Robert Way had to track down ...

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Dear X:

When people send me links about protests in Egypt or Greece or Cleveland, I do what I can as a supporter of a socialist party. What do you propose communists do about these warming temperatures? What weight should we give them in our work? In the most fraternal tone, I have to say that climate change, global warming, whatever term you wish to use, seems to me un-fixable in any capitalist context. What should our transitional demands be?

Isn't this an issue that is un-fixable until after a socialist revolution.... LONG after?

When the socialist reconstruction of society begins -- whatever the context/tempo/et cetera -- the parts of the world long-victimized by imperialism are going to need a real bail-out by the working class of the advanced countries, and this will, unless it is so far in the future that it is some kind of Star Trek never-never land, require running existing industry and technology 24/7 to raise the material level of these countries. Workers states in the former imperialist heartlands cannot tell the workers of the rest of the world to wait as we burn up fossil fuels making solar power arrays and wind turbines.

It is important for communists to organize with all others who are willing to try and curb concrete abuses today, especially when there is already motion around them, like fracking in PA; but "warming" is not concrete.

I know you and I have had discussions on this before, and it is a main area of difference for us. I am not attacking your right to send out these links. I appreciate them. But I really want to know where they fit in to your own Marxist world view.
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Comradely,
Jay Rothermel
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Jay,

My view is not a different from yours as you seem to think. I could sum it up with , "No green revolution without a Red revolution." That is the only way we have any chance of making the huge adjustments that are required.

At the same time, it is important to remain aware of the measure of the problem as it is taken. It is easy enough to understand why capitalists are so quick to minimize the data showing the magnitude and immediacy of the problem. It is more difficult for me to grasp the purpose of comrades (not yourself) who are grasping at straws floated by the worst of the climate-deniers.

There are also trends emerging from this global climate disaster that can be expected to have revolutionary consequences. For example, in the past few months food production has taken a huge hit in Australia and in India for reasons that are traceable to global warming, and that were anticipated, as probable consequences of measured trends, several decades ago as climate scientists urged a course (impossible under capitalism) of reigning in the industrial forces driving these changes. We can expect to see more, and worse, food and water disasters with the costs born disproportionately by workers and the oppressed. Already, this year's food disasters will spell malnutrition and starvation for millions more who are now collateral damage in the capitalist drive for profit.

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Comradely,

X